With Clodion's Poetry and Music, this allegory was one
of four that were meant to bring to life the abstract concepts of the arts
and sciences. They were commissioned by Louis XV's finance minister
Abbé Terray for his elaborate Paris residence. The subject was an
appropriate one for Terray, since he also served briefly as the director of
the king's buildings with overall responsibility for the state of the arts
in France. Painting, sculpture, music, and literature are celebrated by the
young cupidlike figures in the two works here; other children carved by two
other artists represented geometry, geography, architecture, and
astronomy.

Terray is representative of the private patrons who transformed the
monumental public works of the preceding century into the more intimate
works admired by eighteenth-century collectors. He was among the most
unpopular of all Louis XV's ministers, accused of excessive luxury. When he
was swiftly dismissed by the new king after Louis XV's death in 1774, a
Parisian mob burned him in effigy. Public opinion notwithstanding, he seems
to have tried to make much-needed economies in public spending, reform
taxes, and reduce bloated state pensions.